


Salvage What You Can

by bomberqueen17



Series: The Lost Kings [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Iberican, M/M, Prequel, Sexual Assault Mention, early days of the rebellion, space latinos, spy indoctrination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 04:04:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10153283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: A young Cassian Andor makes a friend and learns some hard lessons. In continuity with The Lost Kings series, but a prequel.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (Note on character ages: I began this story assuming that Cassian Andor was the age of the actor who portrayed him in the movies. Diego Luna was 36 at time of filming. Given Star Wars fuzzy timeline math and all, there's some wiggle room, but other canon materials state that Cassian Andor is 26. [I went on [a rant about this on my Tumblr](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/157019393709/wait-whats-the-difference-between-cassians-real), which I flatter myself was amusing.] Anyway-- in Lost Kings, Kes is about 21 at the time of the events of Rogue One, for context, and if Cassian is 26 then, this is all a little creepy, but if he's closer to the age he actually appears, then this all makes a lot more sense. So, I'm terrible at math and won't insist on anything in particular, but if you start worrying about age differences given a relationship outlined below, console yourself by adopting an older age for Cassian as your headcanon too. I set Cassian's age, but not the years in which this story occurs, so that's the variable here.)

  
  


The first time Cassian Andor killed a man he was sixteen years old.

He’d done a lot of things, up until then, that he’d considered morally difficult. He’d justified them all, and discovering political activism had given him a pretty wide umbrella to hide himself under.

But killing a man, he knew, even as he did it, with a knife, blood washing out hot over his hands, the man’s eyes going shocked and blank-- he knew that one was going to keep him up, nights, regardless of how necessary it had been.

It also was much more of a mess than he’d expected. In holodramas, death was bloodless and quick, dramatic and shocking and quickly over. He’d seen his share of death in real life, but his compatriots had all been skilled killers and had made it look too easy.

This was not. He got blood all over himself, and the guy kept making horrible noises a lot longer than he’d expected. He had to smother the man as well, while he bled out, even though he knew he’d done it correctly.

He was late to his rendezvous, and he hadn’t been able to get all the blood off himself. He scrambled in terror and had to keep forcing himself to slow down, not to look suspicious, no one would know that was blood on his trousers, no one was expecting it. That was crap, he’d be spotted at any moment, but he had to make it there and panicking wouldn’t help.

He made it to the drop point, and his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t get the code put into the door hatch. Why were his hands shaking? His hands shouldn’t be shaking. He’d seen this before. This wasn’t new. Death wasn’t new. He’d killed a man, that wasn’t new.

But it was.

He tried three times, and then suddenly the door opened from the other side, and a man said, “Get in here,” and yanked him in by the arm before he could resist.

The door hissed shut, and Cassian blinked in the darkness, braced to fight. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” that same voice said, “they sent a _kid_?”

“You know no one else could have gotten close, Molo,” a woman’s voice said. A light switched on; they were in a hallway, and the light was in an adjoining room. The man was standing a few paces back, arms crossed over his chest; he was big, and human, dark-haired, not old, markings on his face. The woman’s head poked out of the room where the light had been turned on. She wasn’t human; she was a Twi’lek or something, markings on her face too. She wrinkled her nose. “He reeks of blood, though.”

“Then I guess we don’t have to ask if he did it,” the man said. “Did you get what we came for?”

“Identify yourself,” Cassian demanded, recovering himself a little.

The man gave Cassian a dubious once-over, then said, “Fine, I’m agent X47, you’re supposed to rendezvous with me. You’re Aach, I already knew that, they just didn’t tell me you were _twelve_.”

“Sixteen,” Cassian said frostily.

“Four-seven,” the Twi’lek said, “quit messing around and get the chip.”

“We can’t send him back out there like this,” X47 said, though he held his hand out. “He’s all blood.”

“That’s not our problem,” the Twi’lek said, “we have quite enough problems of our own.”

Cassian thought about refusing to hand over the chip, but there was no point. They were right; he was going to be spotted getting to his extraction point. It was daylight, and good weather, and it was a miracle he’d made it here without anyone noticing. His trousers were dark-colored, but even a human would be able to smell the blood. He dug the chip out of his pocket and handed it to X47, but his hand was shaking so badly he had trouble keeping his grip on it for long enough.

He’d killed a man, and he was going to die, and this was all the good he’d have done for the cause.

X47 took his hands between both of his own, and got the chip, frowning down at Cassian. He was a big guy.

“C’mon, Four-seven,” the woman said impatiently.

“He’s not gonna make it,” X47 said. “If we send him back out there he’s not going to make his own extraction point. We’re bringing him with us.”

“We don’t have room!” the woman said.

“We’ll make room,” X47 said.

“I can,” Cassian said, thinking to protest, thinking to assert himself, but he couldn’t even get the words out.

“I’m calling it,” X47 said, fixing his gaze on Cassian and the woman in turn. “It’s too much of a risk. I don’t know what this kid knows but I’m not having him captured, who knows what he could give up.”

“He hardly knows anything,” the woman said.

“He’s a _kid_ ,” X47 said. “I’m done with this discussion. We’ll make it work.”

“If it costs us the mission,” the woman began.

“It’ll be my fault,” X47 said. He let go of Cassian’s hands, and held up the chip. “But it won’t. Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up, kid.”

 

It turned out the woman was a Togruta, not a Twi’lek, and she was named Kana, and had famously little patience for bullshit.

It also turned out that X47’s native language was the same Iberican that Cassian had grown up speaking, and as soon as X47 discovered this, he began to explore the inherent amusement value potential in baiting Kana. Kana was their pilot, and she was a good one. She did not appreciate Cassian’s input into her navigational decisions. She appreciated even less that Cassian wore the same size trousers she did and wound up commandeering a pair of hers while his, rinsed and scrubbed of blood, dried out draped over the back of the copilot’s chair in the little two-seater shuttle Cassian had to cram himself into, with X47’s coat insulating him at least a little from the burning cold of the door hatch.

She was kind enough, at least, that she pretended not to notice when Cassian fell asleep, jammed between X47 and the door hatch, and woke up gagging and crying with the memory of his victim’s blood hot on his hands. X47 comforted him, and didn’t make him feel like a stupid kid.

“Took me like that the first time too,” X47 said softly, and in the dark of hyperspace with the uncanny flickering of passing stars it wasn’t weird or wrong to sit with his head in the other man’s lap. X47 stroked Cassian’s hair gently. “It gets easier. It’s okay. You did what you had to do, you know?”

“I’m afraid of what it will be like when it gets easier,” Cassian said quietly after a little while.

“Wise child,” X47 said.

 

They parted ways, at the next rendezvous point, and Cassian gave Kana her trousers back. X47 sat with Cassian for a little while as they refueled the shuttle, and the harried dispatcher chased up a connecting flight to get Cassian to the debrief he was supposed to have already made it to on his own.

“It’s nice to speak the mother-tongue with somebody, huh?” X47 said.

“Yeah,” Cassian said shyly. It was a long time since someone had been kind to him, or maybe it was more accurate to say it was a long time since he’d let anyone be kind to him, and he found himself not wanting to be parted from X47 now.

“Makes me think of home,” X47 said, and looked bleak.

“My home is gone,” Cassian offered.

X47 looked grimly out at the horizon. He was a striking man, with a strong curved nose coming out of a smooth face, eyes so dark his pupils and irises blended together in most lights, skin almost copper, hair black like deep space. He had a sigil of some sort picked out in dark ink across one high cheekbone, and a series of dots on his chin. “Mine too,” he said. “The whole planet. Mining company stripped it down to nothing, took even the atmosphere.”

“Shit,” Cassian said.

“Yeah,” X47 said. “You?”

Cassian fidgeted. “Well, uh,” he said. “I mean. The planet’s probably still there. But everybody’s dead.” He grimaced. “I mean, everyone I cared about.”

“I figured,” X47 said. He leaned over, pressed his shoulder against Cassian’s. “Think of it as lucky, though. At least if they’re dead, nothing worse can happen to them.”

Cassian frowned. “How is that a consolation?” he asked.

X47 wasn’t looking at him. “Don’t tell anybody this,” he said. “I tell everyone my whole family’s dead. But they’re not. There are a couple still alive.”

“Oh,” Cassian said, confused. “But-- isn’t that good?”

“No,” X47 said. He looked over at Cassian. “Look, you probably got into this whole thing, the Rebellion and all, because you had no other choice. But know this: if you’re in this, you can’t ever be friends with anyone on the outside. My family thinks I’m dead. That’s the only way for them to be safe. I can’t ever see them again, but I have to worry about them every day.”

“Oh,” Cassian said.

They sat in silence for a moment. Then X47 leaned away, and punched Cassian lightly in the shoulder. “I gotta go, kid. I’ll see you around.”

“Hey,” Cassian said, standing up as X47 did. His tongue kind of stuck in his mouth a little, and X47 gave him a faint questioning half-smile. “Will I see you again?”

“Maybe,” X47 said.

“Uh,” Cassian said, bashful, looking down at his feet. “If not, thanks?”

“Hey,” X47 said, and put an arm around him briefly. “Don’t mention it.” He let go, and stepped back, looking Cassian up and down seriously. He seemed to come to a decision. “X47’s a temporary code name,” he said, then laughed, self-deprecating. “Obviously.” He went on, “You’re more likely to find me by the name Izarri.”

“That’s not your real name, is it?” Cassian asked suspiciously. It came out more plaintive than he’d meant.

Izarri shook his head, giving Cassian a little smile that managed to be more wistful than condescending. He stepped back another pace, gave Cassian a little mock-salute wave, and turned and walked away.

Cassian watched him go.

  


___________________

  


“What, me?” Cassian held his hands up, palms outward. “I don’t know anything, I was just passing through!”

“I’ve heard that one before,” the Stormtrooper said, voice unnervingly flat through the vocoder. “ID?”

“Of course,” Cassian said with a nervous laugh, fumbling through his pockets. He didn’t have the proper chips for the identity he was under on this planet. He should shoot the guy and run, but he wasn’t likely to make it if he tried it. “I, ah--”

“What’s that,” the Stormtrooper said. “Don’t move.” There was a blaster pointed at him. Cassian froze. Shit. The grip of his blaster was showing under the corner of his jacket. Careless, careless. He was eighteen, full-sized now, and people looked more assiduously for weapons on adults than they had on kids. He’d practiced how to move so the blaster wouldn’t show, but in his nervousness he’d forgotten the gestures he’d practiced.

“I have a permit!” Cassian said. He didn’t.

“There are no permits for those in this sector,” the Stormtrooper said. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Shit, shit, shit, shit. “I didn’t mean, ah,” Cassian said desperately, “I didn’t know this sector was restricted! I thought my permit was good here!”

“Too bad, pal,” the ‘trooper said, and Cassian knew he couldn’t get the thing out in time now, he should have just drawn it right off the bat, but he couldn’t have survived it, there were three more ‘troopers in the alley, he shouldn’t have stood, he should have run, he’d’ve been gunned down anyway. It was too late. Fuck. He didn’t know what to do. If they killed him, they’d still find the data stick. Dead or alive, his mission was doomed.

He put his hands on his head, and the ‘trooper took his blaster, and then patted him down, none too gently, joined by another one. “Hey!” Cassian yelped, as one of them grabbed his balls.

“Just checking,” the Stormtrooper said, and even with the flattening affect of the vocoder the sly amusement came through.

“He is a pretty little yop, isn’t he,” said the other one, and Cassian gritted his teeth at the slur. “What are you, sixteen? I bet I know what kind of business _you’re_ here for.”

Should’ve taken his chances on a quick draw, Cassian thought, swallowing rising panic, but it was a consolation that they’d probably find the data stick in his boot before they got a chance to molest him too much.

 

He thought wrong; they didn’t find the data stick.

It was a backwater planet, and discipline was loose. They didn’t really think he was anything more than a kid with an unlicensed weapon. But they weren’t really in any hurry to process him either. It became clear they’d stopped him because they figured no one would miss him. Everyone else in the holding cell was similarly unimportant, minor-- just there to make their numbers look good, prove their vigilance, while not actually making them do too much work. There were a couple actual smugglers, a couple of prostitutes, and assorted loiterers and grifters.

One of the prostitutes took one look at Cassian’s face when they tossed him into the holding cell after “intake processing”, and said, “Come here, kid.” He was too prickly to let her hug him, but he accepted a spot between her and the wall, and she hissed at the grifter who came over to hassle him. Surprisingly enough, the grifter backed off, but it wasn’t that surprising once Cassian noticed there was blood under the woman’s fingernails.

He’d been there about twelve hours, by his count, when everyone in the outer office all clattered to attention. The other prisoners looked up, some with hope and some with dread. Cassian’s bruises had all come up to crippling stiffness, but he managed to get to his feet with the woman beside him’s help. She wasn’t moving too smoothly either.

None of them were; their idea of intake processing here was not really pleasant for anyone. If they didn’t like your face, they beat you. If they liked your face, well.

There was a newcomer in the outer office, speaking sternly, a strong feminine voice, and the sound was muffled by the echoes of the corridor, but it was pretty clear that she was some sort of command presence and the outpost was collectively getting a dressing-down. _Good_ , Cassian thought, but any fierce little delight in their distress was eclipsed by the realization that anyone competent was going to immediately figure out what he was up to. He was pretty doomed, was the thing.

“Of course, ma’am, right away,” someone said, bowing and scraping into the hallway, clattering to attention, and the Imperial officer swept into the corridor and looked into the holding cell, and Cassian stared at her and thought maybe he’d lost his mind. He knew her from somewhere, was the thing.

She glanced across the collection of people there, and sure enough, her gaze caught on Cassian and paused there a moment. She knew him too. She was a striking woman, strong-featured, dark hair in an elaborate hairstyle under her uniform cap, bright blue eyes and very dark skin.

“Make-work,” she scoffed, “these are all-- you’ve just been nabbing people who look like they might be petty criminals to make yourselves look busy. None of these people match the charges against them.”

She swept back out of the room, and Cassian stared fixedly at her back. He knew her. Why did he know her?

There was much hustle and bustle, after that, with a flurry of outprocessing as the charges against each person in the holding cell were filed, the officer snapping impatiently at the staff as they scurried around. Cassian was the sixth one to be pulled from the cell.

“Possession of an illegal weapon. Claimed to have a permit,” she read. “But he _has_ a permit,” and she pointed at the holo, sounding incredulous at their incompetence.

“There are no weapons permits issued for this--” the officer in charge of the Stormtroopers said, baffled, and she jabbed at the holo in irritation.

Sure enough, there was a little blinking notification. Cassian managed to twist his own astonished expression into a resigned smile. He knew how he knew her, now:

It was Kana, the Togruta, in heavy makeup, and she’d just inserted that marker into his inprocessing file.

“He has a diplomatic exemption,” Kana said. “This is exactly what I was afraid of.”

“There are no exemptions,” the officer protested bravely.

“Certainly,” Kana said frostily, gesturing, “there are.”

 

After that it was a matter of paperwork, and he stumbled out the door with his blaster, improbably enough, back in his belt, his boots heavy with exhaustion and also the undisturbed data chip, and his skin crawling with a desire to scrub himself until he bled, not that it would erase the bruises where their fingers had dug at him.

He huddled against the wall, collecting himself for just a moment. Clearly, if Kana was here, there were other agents here: they’d figured out he’d missed his handoff and they were deploying alternate plans, because scuttling the op would cost lives. He had to find the new handoff and work it out. He just needed a moment to collect himself.

The shadow farther down the alley moved, and he noticed it instantly, but pretended he hadn’t. “Fucking pigs,” he said to himself, as if he still believed himself to be alone.

“Andor,” a voice said softly.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, something in his chest unlocking as he recognized X47’s-- Izarri’s voice.

He’d had a lot of successful missions in the year and some, close to two years, since he’d met Izarri. It just figured Izarri would see him again just as he failed, again.

“Where’d you hide it?” Izarri asked in Iberican, coming close enough to murmur. He was less enormous now than in Cassian’s memory, but he was still big. Cassian was coming to terms with the fact that he himself was probably not going to wind up any taller than this, though he might fill out a little. “They didn’t find it?”

“They didn’t look,” he said, and laughed bitterly. “They didn’t fucking-- who does a strip search and doesn’t even untie your boots?”

“Oh, kid,” Izarri said. He put a hand carefully around Cassian’s back and led him away from the guard station.

“I still have it,” Cassian said, as he walked.

“Let’s get away from here and let Kana work,” Izarri said. “I have a safe house.”

“I gotta make the second handoff,” Cassian said.

“No,” Izarri said, “you gotta lie low, they have your mugshot. You’re not showing your face on this planet anymore. I know where the next handoff site is, I’ll make it.”

“Yes, sir,” Cassian said, biting off any further protests. There was no room for pride here, and Izarri was right.

 

The safe house was a gross little apartment in a basement, but it had a ‘fresher. Cassian scrubbed himself nearly bloody, as he’d wanted to. It didn’t help, like he’d figured it wouldn’t, but at least he’d satisfied the impulse.

It could have been worse, he’d dealt with worse, they hadn’t really injured him at all, they hadn’t damaged him or even really done very much at all. They’d only used their hands, hadn’t even taken their gloves off, mostly had wanted to humiliate him and hadn’t been all that committed to it. But they could have, and it was the powerlessness that was the thing that’d stay with you. He knew that. This was all old news.

It wasn’t new.

Knowing that didn’t help.

He came out and Kana was there, shaking out her-- head-frill things, whatever those were, she’d had them elaborately bound up under a wrap and a wig, and it looked like that had been uncomfortable. The makeup was smeared away from her eyes, showing some of her distinctive bright facial markings. “Finally,” she said, ignoring the way he was clutching his clothes to his chest so she wouldn’t look at the bruises on him, the marks he’d left with his own fingernails. “I thought you were gonna stay in there all night. This shit itches, man.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’m just giving you a hard time,” she said, throwing the wig down on the low table in the middle of the anteroom. “If you need to borrow pants again, my bag’s on the bed.”

Cassian did not need to borrow pants, but he also recognized that he did not need to point out to her that he was a handful of centimeters too tall and probably too broad of frame now to wear her trousers anymore. It had been an apology, and he took it as such.

She didn’t take long, and came out stark naked. The markings weren’t just on her face. Her body looked like a human woman’s, except for the markings, and no hair at all anywhere. Cassian had to blink to make himself look away. “That’s the only towel, Aach,” she said, and he picked it up where he’d left it sitting on the back of the couch, and threw it to her apologetically: it was wet through, because he’d dried his hair with it. She made a disgusted face, but disappeared back into the fresher room with it, and came out a few moments later fully dressed.

“Thanks,” he said, as she pawed through her bag and puttered around the room, hanging the towel over the heating unit to dry.

“For--” She paused to glance over at him, quizzical, but seemed to figure it out before she even finished the question. “I mean, we didn’t do it for you, kid. There’s lives on the line if we don’t get that chip through.”

“I know,” Cassian said awkwardly. “Just--”

“I get it,” she said, and sat down. She threw him a ration bar, and set to unwrapping one of her own. “They mess you up good?”

“No,” Cassian said, fumbling with the wrapper. “No, it was-- it was just the usual stuff.”

“They were pretty fucking horrified when I convinced them you were important,” she said, “so I figure they must have been pretty nasty to you. Do you need a med droid?”

“No,” Cassian said, “no-- no, it’s, it wasn’t-- that.”

“Small mercy, I guess,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, and curled into himself a bit more in the chair.

They ate in silence, and the time stretched. “Izarri should be back by now,” Cassian said finally, when he couldn’t control his fretting any longer.

Kana snorted. “Molo can take care of himself,” she said. “Anyway what’s your deal, you from the same homeworld or something?”

“No,” Cassian said, startled. He hadn’t considered what Izarri’s real name would be, until now. Molo sounded like a first name. “Izarri said his was destroyed. I’m just from Fest.”

“Oh yeah,” Kana said. “He’s like. The last of his kind, or something. Why do you speak his weird ancestral language, then?”

“It’s not an ancestral language,” Cassian said, bristling a tiny bit. “It’s Iberican, it’s like, the second most popular human language after Basic.”

“Basic isn’t a human language,” Kana said.

Cassian stared at her, but he wasn’t so young now that he didn’t know when he was being baited. So he grinned instead. “Whatever,” he said. “I’m just saying, Izarri and I and about fifty billion other people, most of them human but not all, speak Iberican, so it’s not some weird obscure homeworld deal.”

She laughed. “I knew Izarri had to like you for something besides your pretty face,” she said, and he in turn knew she didn’t just mean the language.

 

Izarri stumbled in beat to shit and bleeding, and they had to run, but the mission didn’t get scrapped at least. And, better still, they asked for and got permission to bring Cassian in on their next mission, since Izarri was moderately injured and would need the assistance.

“It’s not that bad,” Izarri said, hissing as he tried and failed to get his shirt off.

“No, I’m calling it,” Kana said, rolling her eyes. “It is that bad. Aach, give him a hand.”

Izarri’s ribs were clearly cracked, and there wasn’t anything in the medkit that would really fix that. They had a bigger vessel this time, so Cassian could help Izarri lie down in the back, and stick a pain relief stim to the inside of his elbow as he stitched and glued up the slice down his opposite forearm. Cassian was good at stitches and glue, they were one of the early things he’d become good at, before he was big enough to fight. He’d seen a lot of injuries.

Izarri’s head lolled in relief as the stim took effect. “Shit,” he sighed, “I’m getting too old for this.”

He had a fair collection of scars, seaming his lean torso, and Cassian inventoried them with curious eyes while he finished cleaning and bandaging the defensive wound in Izarri’s forearm. When he was done, he set Izarri’s arm down gently across his belly, and then rubbed his thumb softly over a curving scar along the edge of Izarri’s rib cage, looking at the bruising where he’d been injured this time.

Izarri blinked muzzily. “Wha’rr doing,” he said.

“Nothing,” Cassian said. He suddenly wondered if anyone had ever groped Izarri, or if he’d always been big and scary enough that nobody’d dare.

No, nobody was born big and scary. Cassian folded up his hands for a moment, then moved away from Izarri and set to packing up the medkit.

After a moment, Izarri rolled onto his side with a pained grunt and tried to push himself up. “No,” Cassian said, “no, don’t move.”

“Floor’s cold,” Izarri said, getting himself upright. He swayed a little, and his skin was all in goosebumps. Cassian had maybe overestimated his weight when he’d measured the dose for the pain stim. “Holy shit I’m high.”

“I should have asked instead of guessing at the dose,” Cassian admitted.

Izarri shivered, and Cassian found his pack and pulled it over so he could reach himself a fresh shirt. “Yeah,” Izarri said, “I should’ve said, I just didn’t think of it.”

“You weigh like, a hundred standard, right?” Cassian asked.

Izarri made a choking noise it took Cassian a moment to recognize as a laugh. “Shit, child,” he said, “try eighty.”

“Oh, whoops,” Cassian said. He himself was barely sixty.

“I’m gonna have to sleep that off,” Izarri said, shivering harder, and Cassian had to help him get dressed. He was still shivering afterward, so Cassian rummaged around a little and then leaned up toward the cockpit.

“You guys got any blankets?”

“Bench on the left,” Kana answered. She turned her head. “Is he okay?”

“I gave him too much pain relief,” Cassian said, “but I think none of his injuries are serious. Cracked ribs, he’s gonna have to take it easy for a little while.”

“Oh, shit,” Kana said, “he’s a lightweight about that stuff. He doesn’t even drink, you know? He doesn’t do so good with drugs. I shoulda warned you.”

“Whoops,” Cassian said, and discovered that the bench on the left did indeed have a compartment underneath that was full of blankets. He found one with decent loft and put it down on the floor, got Izarri to lie on it, and then covered him over with a pair of blankets that had reflective insulation in them so they’d hold in body heat.

It still wasn’t enough. Cassian dug a chemical heat pack out of the medkit, but Izarri stopped him from opening it. “Don’t do that,” he said, slurring through chattering teeth, “those things are expensive. I’ll be all right. You save those for hypothermia or something. I’m just uncomfortable, it’s not worth wasting it on that.”

Cassian put the heatpack away, frowning at Izarri, who was shivering so hard he was nearly locked-up. “You finished my mission,” he said.

Izarri shrugged one shoulder, only a little bit. “Don’t get worked-up,” he said.

“You’ve only ever seen me fuck up, though,” Cassian said. “I swear, I’ve completed missions.”

“I know you have, kid,” Izarri said. “If I thought you were a fuck-up I wouldn’t waste resources bailing you out. You have a pretty good completion rate. Somebody ought to work with you on some of your skills, though, because you’re too promising to squander on shit you haven’t been trained for.”

“I just did a whole rotation on hand-to-hand skills,” Cassian said.

“Oh, they must figure you’re at your full growth, then,” Izarri said. “Somebody’s watching your file, at least.”

“I’m eighteen,” Cassian said. “I’m not likely to get much bigger. Most societies figure I’m an adult now.”

“Hm,” Izarri said, as if that meant something to him. He was still shivering. Cassian came and sat next to him.

“I’m cheaper than a heat pack,” he said.

“Don’t talk about my friend like that,” Izarri said muzzily, and lifted a corner of the blanket. Cassian crawled underneath, and Izarri wrapped a heavy arm around him and pulled him in before passing out with his face pressed to the back of Cassian’s neck.

 

Cassian hadn’t meant to sleep like that, but he did, and woke in some confusion to Kana leaning over him. “Is he dead?” she asked.

Cassian disentangled himself from Izarri, who was clearly not dead. Cassian had woken up in the arms of a corpse before, so he’d know. But he didn’t figure telling Kana that would help. “He’s fine,” Cassian said, grabbing the hand scanner from the medkit. It showed the hotspots where Izarri’s body was still dealing with inflammation from the cracked ribs, showed the healing cut where the bacta was nearly done knitting the tissue under the skin together, showed his basal body temperature as adequate and his respiratory rate slightly depressed but not unduly so. “The stim’ll wear off in another couple of hours.”

“Good,” Kana said. “We might need him for the next bit, but you and I can do this bit together.”

 

Izarri was groggy, but awake when they came back. He had managed to make caf in the auto-brewer. He looked horribly hung-over and unsteady. Cassian sprinted past him into the cockpit and fired up the engines, and Kana paused to slam the liftgate shut as fast as she could make the thing go, and by the time she got to the cockpit, Cassian had them airborne.

She sat in the copilot’s seat and did the hyperspace calculations quickly, and didn’t try to take over, but let Cassian throw the lever and take them up. “You know your shit,” she said breathlessly.

“I do,” Cassian said. “I know you’ve always had to rescue me but I promise I’m not always like that.”

“Nice work,” she said.

Izarri leaned unsteadily against the back of the pilot’s chair, and offered Cassian the cup of caf. “Thanks,” Cassian said.

“Got the timers set,” Kana said.

“Perfect,” Izarri said. “Why the haste?”

“The usual,” Kana said.

Izarri snorted. “Of course.”

 

Cassian ran half a dozen more missions with them, and they were some of the most fun he’d had. Well, fun wasn’t the word. It was exhilarating, though, and he felt like he was both making a difference and gaining important experience. He’d worked in teams before, but they’d always treated him like a kid. Kana and Izarri never did. Kana taught him a bunch more about piloting, the kinds of things you couldn’t learn in simulators, and Izarri, well.

Izarri taught Cassian a lot of things, and spent a lot of time with him, and Cassian got closer and closer with him. Izarri taught him cooking, which was a revelation, taught him all kinds of things about human behavior, how to read a mark, how to gain a man’s confidence, or a woman’s, or several variations in between, including some xenos. Izarri taught him how to hold his liquor and how to act drunk. He taught him how to change his appearance. He taught him how to read a room, and much better hand-to-hand techniques than the other instructors. He even taught Cassian how to seduce a mark for a honeypot mission, and taught him, briefly, how to kiss, which wasn’t something Cassian had managed to study much on his own. But despite that, Izarri seemed to be pretty firmly interested in putting Cassian into a little brother kind of role, which was increasingly not really what Cassian wanted from him.

 

“You want him to touch your junk,” Kana observed.

Cassian successfully hid his startled flinch. She’d been trying to sneak up on him for days now, and had never succeeded; he wasn’t surprised so much at her proximity as what she’d actually said. “My what,” he said.

“Your, you know. That thing humans have.” She made a gesture like something dangling around waist-height.

Cassian had done some surreptitious research into both Togrutas and Twi’leks and so he was well aware that they reproduced in ways very similar to humans. “You know fine well, number one, what that thing’s called, and number two, that it’s neither unique to humans nor universal among them.”

“Don’t change the subject,” she said. “You want to mush your face on his face and wiggle around, I know the look.”

“When you put it like that, it sounds so tempting,” he said.

“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I mean, he seems to think you’re a youngling, but as far as I can tell you’re full-grown, so there’s no reason why not.”

“I don’t want to-- whatever you said,” Cassian said wearily, congratulating himself on managing not to blush; he knew exactly how Izarri’s face felt mushed against his and it was basically all he’d been able to think about. They were keeping watch, waiting for Izarri to hit up a contact and get a set of coordinates so they could continue. So they had the engines prewarmed, but the burners weren’t on, because they’d already been waiting in a state of high readiness for two hours and it might take him the rest of the night to get back.

“You do, though,” Kana said. “And it would be okay.”

“If he wanted to,” Cassian said, “I would, but I don’t think he does, so it’s sort of moot. Can we stop talking about it?”

“He might well want to,” Kana said. “You should ask him. That was what I was trying to get at. He pretends he’s too cool for companionship but he looks at your butt sometimes, I’ve seen him do it. He definitely thinks that stuff on your head is pretty, he pets it more than he ought to.”

Cassian touched his hair before he could stop himself. It was true, Izarri tousled Cassian’s hair a lot. “No, Kana,” he said, pained, “that’s a thing humans do to kids. They mess up their hair a lot, it’s-- it’s an affectionate thing like you’d do to a kid. Not someone you want to-- You know.”

“Bone,” Kana said. “Someone you want to bone.”

“Who even talks like that,” Cassian said, throwing the closest thing to hand at her. It was the stylus from the comm suite. He followed it up with the headset. “That’s disgusting. Take it back!”

“You want to bone him,” Kana said. She picked up the headset and stylus and set them down on the dashboard. “Don’t throw things. I’m not judging you, stars. As far as humans go he’s very attractive, and he has taken a great interest in your education. Boning would be a logical next step.”

“That’s gross,” Cassian said. “And crass.”

The comm crackled, and Cassian swore. Kana threw the headset at him, and he plugged it in. “-- x47 to base,” Izarri was saying, “mission compromised, I need an extraction.”

“Well, fuck,” Kana said. “Suit up.”

“This is base, I copy,” Cassian said. “We’re on our way.”

 

It went poorly. Izarri was badly-injured but ambulatory. They had to create a diversion, and Cassian used himself as bait to attract pursuers while Kana got Izarri out. “It was a trap,” Izarri said, “the contact was bad,” making sure Cassian could hear him on the comm, and Cassian said, “acknowledged,” understanding this was a knowledge transfer, understanding that Izarri was hedging his bets in case he didn’t get out.

_I’m the rescue this time_ , Cassian thought, and threw himself out the back door and down the street, back toward where he’d left them.

 

They made it out, barely. Cassian took a metal bar to the chest that knocked the wind out of him and left him struggling to breathe. Izarri had been knifed and had managed to get a tourniquet on himself but had lost a lot of blood. Kana had caught a glancing blaster bolt that sheared off part of one of her head-things, which was clearly excruciating, and had burned her shoulder badly. But they made it to the ship and between Cassian and Kana got the thing airborne and into hyperspace.

“I can fly this,” Kana gritted out. Her wounds were cauterized, at least. “Go stop Molo from dying.”

Izarri was ash-pale in the back, sprawled on the floor with his injured leg hooked up over the side of the bench in a last-ditch attempt to slow the bleeding. There was blood everywhere. Izarri clearly couldn’t focus his eyes, let alone save himself; he was in no condition to treat his own wound. He was conscious, but barely, hands moving purposelessly as he tried to hang onto awareness.

“I got this,” Cassian said, popping the medkit open, and keying the interface to show him instructions for _massive blood loss_. Saline, to keep blood volume up, warm packet first, he tucked one into his shirt and hissed at how cold it felt. Yeah okay. Pressure, the tourniquet was doing that. Examine wound. He grabbed the razor from the medkit and cut the leg of Izarri’s trousers open to get a better look. It was a deep puncture wound, and blood pulsed sluggishly.

Repair blood vessel damage, the medkit blinked at him. He scrubbed sanitizer across his hands, and wheezed at the smell of it; he was hurting pretty bad but at least he could still move. When the adrenaline wore off he’d be in trouble.

“Hey,” Izarri murmured, belatedly noticing him.

“I got you,” Cassian said. He clamped the damaged blood vessel, loosened the tourniquet to save the rest of the leg, and went to work.

“Hey, kid,” Izarri said.

“I’m right here,” Cassian said. Bacta, glue. The medkit prompted him that the saline pack should be warmed by now, and he realized he couldn’t feel it anymore against his skin, so that was probably true. He carefully removed the clamp, and the repair to the blood vessel held. Good. He hooked up the saline pack, and the autoinjector took its damn sweet time finding a vein in Izarri’s arm to put itself into, but after a moment the sweet sound of the little pump kicked in.

Pain relief, the medkit prompted him. Cassian picked out a correct dose this time and thumbed it onto Izarri’s throat, not trusting the inside of his elbow to hold. And then he remembered that Kana probably needed pain relief too, so he patted Izarri on the forehead.

“Hold very still,” he said. “I will be right back.”

“Bless you,” Kana breathed, as he held out the pack of stims to her. She selected a half-dose, and stuck it to a spot just under her ear, which Cassian wouldn’t have known to do.

“He might live,” Cassian said, and left her a spare stim sitting on the dashboard.

He wasn’t going to take one, yet. They weren’t out of the woods and as long as his adrenaline held he could avoid thinking about it.

Izarri was pale and unmoving, but had a pulse, so Cassian went back to work repairing the deep tissue damage. He packed the whole thing with as much bacta as he dared use, but he knew he’d need some for Kana.

His breathing was coming with more difficulty as the excitement wore off. This was getting problematic. He had to stop and sit up, tipping his head back. It hurt, it hurt real bad, and beyond the pain, it just felt like something was wrong, in a deeply-unsettling way.

“Hey,” Izarri murmured again in a moment. “I’m not dead.”

“You’re not dead,” Cassian said, and smiled down at him.

“I might not make it though,” Izarri said.

“No guarantees of anything,” Cassian said. “Shh, save your strength.”

“Hey listen, though,” Izarri said, a little dreamily. “Cassian. I just-- listen.”

“Okay,” Cassian said, and taped the wound shut, then put a bandage on it. He brought Izarri’s leg down and bent it, propping it so it would stay slightly elevated. The saline pack was nearly empty. He sat and rested his back against the side of the bench, trying to catch his breath.

“Some of my family knows I’m alive,” Izarri said. “I want you to tell them if I die. Can you do that for me, Cassian?”

“No promises, Izarri,” Cassian said. “Don’t-- make me do that.”

“Call me by my name,” Izarri said wistfully.

“Molo,” Cassian whispered. He reached over and took Molo’s hand, which was freezing cold. He needed to get the man another saline pack. There was artificial blood in there, he needed to get that out, that would help. He just needed a minute to catch his breath.

“My real last name is Untar,” Izarri said. “Molo Untar. It’s my real name, that my mother gave me.”

“Okay,” Cassian said, humbled by it.

“I have a son,” Molo said. “He thinks I’m-- he knows I’m alive but he thinks I abandoned him.”

“Shit,” Cassian said.

“He’s little,” Molo said. “He-- he’s like eight now. Nine. His mother and I agreed-- it was the only way. He thinks. He thinks I’m a good-for-nothing vagrant. I see him once in a while and he doesn’t really know me.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassian said.

“It’s the only way,” Molo said. “It’s the only way to keep them safe. But-- Cassian--”

“Shh,” Cassian said soothingly, as Molo made to sit up. “Stay still, you’ll blow that repair right out of the artery.”

“Listen,” Molo whispered, pleadingly.

“I’m listening, Molo,” Cassian said. “You have to lie still. You’re probably not going to die if you just lie fucking _still_.”

“Okay,” Molo said, subsiding. “Okay. Cassian, though, listen to me--”

“I’m listening,” Cassian said, resigned. He managed to sit up and reach the medkit, and he rummaged until he found a packet of replacement blood, and slipped it into his shirt. He held it against the bruise across his chest, and the cold helped a little. It hurt, it hurt real bad. He couldn’t breathe. _Calm down, calm down_ , he thought, and slowed his breathing and lowered his shoulders and tried not to wheeze.

Fuck, he needed to address his own injuries. This wasn’t an adrenaline letdown. He fumbled out the hand scanner and pointed it at himself.

Fracture, it said, sternal fracture, rib fracture, rib fracture, contusion, bruising, fluid in lung, more data required.

He jabbed the _treatment_ button and it didn’t respond. He jabbed it again, and text scrolled up, finally, lagging because there was so much of it, that was a bad sign. At the end it blinked, _beyond scope of first aid, seek med droid immediately_.

Well, they didn’t have one.

“You’re hurt,” Molo said, which was more awareness than he’d shown in a while.

“Internal,” Cassian said, and scrolled back up through the holo-text. Anti-inflammatory. He found the requisite stim and stuck it to his wrist. _Med-droid_ , it blinked at him. “Yeah, yeah,” and he dismissed the notification.

“Fuck,” Molo said, “let me--”

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Cassian hissed at him, “fucking _move_ , I _just_ got that bleeding stopped and if you start it again I will _murder_ you.”

“Yes, sir,” Molo said. Cassian pulled the replacement blood packet out of his shirt and snapped off the empty saline packet, hooking the replacement blood packet into its place and saving himself the hassle of dealing with the auto-injector.

“Kana’s hurt too,” Cassian managed in a moment. “I gave her a pain relief stim but she’ll need more, maybe bacta.”

“Ok,” Molo said.

It was still hard to breathe. Cassian skimmed the treatment options on the scanner readout, a little grimly. His only hope was that the injury wasn’t severe enough to stop his heart with the swelling. And that whatever displacement there was of the rib fractures didn’t puncture his lung, or hadn’t already. He braced himself so he’d stay upright even if he passed out, and handed the scanner down to Molo.

“Give it another twenty minutes,” he said with difficulty, “and then check-- your healing-- with that thing, and if it says the-- blood vessel-- will hold-- you gotta go-- check on Kana.”

“Okay,” Molo said.

“Either mine’ll kill me-- or it won’t,” Cassian said. “We can’t do any more-- without a med droid.”

After a little while, Molo sat up and pressed his shoulder against Cassian’s. Cassian was laboring to breathe, head tipped back, spots in his vision either from the pain or oxygen deprivation or both. “Sounds pretty bad,” he said.

“Is,” Cassian confirmed, letting his eyes sink closed.

He drifted for a while, Molo’s shoulder warm against his. But then he lost track of time, and everything was cold.

  


He came to in a med bay somewhere, and they told him he’d had a close call, but everything should be on the mend. “Great,” he said, and went under again.

He finally woke up pretty much healed. It took him a while to track down someone who could tell him where he was and what the situation was, but it was a Rebel-friendly hospital.

Untar and Kana had left already, with no words or notes or anything left behind. Just his pack, with his stuff in it.

He had a new assignment, so he swallowed down his weird feeling of abandonment, and got on with it.

 

Two days later he found the scrap of flimsi folded into a spare pair of his socks. It was covered in writing, but none of it made sense. It took Cassian two days of puzzling it over before he figured out the cipher.

_Alderaan_ , it said.

_Lita Dameron. Norasol Yauta. Kes Dameron._

_My family._

_If you want to get out, Bail Organa can help you. If you do, tell my family I’m alive._

 

Cassian wouldn’t have been much of a spy if he didn’t look them up. Not in the kind of way that would bring any attention down on them, but quietly. Subtly. He looked into the story of the dying planet, first, and it didn’t take him long to make the connection between a planet sold to a mining corporation, and a group of refugees seeking asylum on Alderaan, appealing specifically to then-Viceroy Bail Organa.

He knew not to pull hard on that thread. Organa was involved in the Rebellion, had been from the beginning, and it was utterly crucial not to cast any suspicion on him.

 

Kes Dameron was the kid. Born the year before the Republic fell. He was cute, he was really cute. There weren’t a lot of holos, only ones from formal delegations to the Alderaanian government. Lita was small and dark-haired and intense-eyed. Kes was solemn and blank, odd as any child in formal-wear. There was one very cute holo of Kes and the Organas’ daughter, Leia, who was a year or two younger. Leia looked composed, sweet, dignified. Kes looked blank and terrified.

 

It was good to know, Cassian supposed, trying not to nurse resentment. Molo and Kana had gotten reassigned. They hadn’t snuck out while he was passed-out. They hadn’t abandoned him. It wasn’t fair to feel that way.

He still felt that way, though.

 

_______________

  


“Really,” Cassian murmured, raising his eyebrows and leaning in. “You know people in the Rebellion!”

“Shh,” the contact said, and alcohol had loosened his movements a little. “I mean, I do, but of course,” and he shrugged, “I am a sensible man, but I’m not afraid of danger.”

“It sounds _very dangerous_ ,” Cassian said, letting his gaze linger on the man’s face, his voice gone low and husky.

“I can’t tell you much,” the man said. “Of course it’s very dangerous.” He leaned in even closer, and it took all of Cassian’s discipline not to flinch away from the man’s sour boozy breath. “But I know the Rebellion is relying on a contract with a weapons broker over in the merchants’ quarter.” He was nearly whispering now. “I’m helping broker the deal, and then I’m going to turn my contact over to the Empire and collect the bounty.”

“There’s a bounty on him,” Cassian murmured, as if very impressed indeed. The fucker was right, the Rebellion _was_ working on a contract with a broker over there. If this guy was leaking to him this easily, he’d leaked elsewhere. “That sounds really _really_ dangerous.”

“Oh, it’s dangerous all right,” the man said. “It’s insanely dangerous, but the payout is enormous.”

“Now you’re talking my language,” Cassian said.

“Come on in back with me,” the man said, breath hot in Cassian’s ear, hand hot on Cassian’s thigh, “and I’ll talk some more of your language.”

“I like the sound of that,” Cassian breathed back, but when the man would have kissed him, he jerked his face back. “Ah-ah. Not here. I’m not that kind of guy.”

“Of course not,” the man said, nearly dazed with desire. But he got himself under control and went up to the room, and Cassian managed to make sure no one noticed they were together as they left.

  


Cassian climbed out the window and landed lightly in a crouch, getting his bearings for a brief instant before setting off toward the merchants’ quarter at a run. This time, he hadn’t gotten blood everywhere. This time, he’d made do with the smothering. With any luck, it’d be assumed the guy drank too much and had a heart attack or something, and they wouldn’t look for the knife marks under his clothes.

He’d given Cassian a list of all his associates, including the others who were in on the double-cross. And the Resistance agent they were set up to turn in was Izarri.

  


Cassian startled Kana badly by dropping onto the rooftop next to her. She almost shot him. “You idiot,” she hissed.

“Untar’s made,” he said. “Get him out of there.”

“How do you know?” she demanded, but she was already keying something into her comm. Silent communications; it would buzz so Molo knew to look at it.

“I just murdered the guy that gave him up,” Cassian said. “I have a list of the double agents. Get him out of there.”

Kana’s comm buzzed, and she held it up so Cassian could see, too. “TRAP,” it said.

“Fuck,” she said, “that means he can’t get out.” She keyed something in. DVR-3, she sent. “Diversion,” she said.

“I can do that,” Cassian said.

 

There followed a lot of chaos, some explosions, and some shooting. Molo came scrambling out of the building with blood all over his face, and Cassian grabbed his arm and yanked him down a side street.

“Andor,” Molo said, startled.

“Untar,” Cassian said back. “I got a list of the other double-agents, already sent it, nice job on bait.”

“Asshole,” Molo said, but grinned, and they split up and ran down opposing streets.

 

They almost made it. They reunited kind of violently; Cassian slammed into Molo as he rounded a corner and almost fell over, and the other man grabbed him and pulled him into the safety spot. It was a tiny room, they had to stand facing each other, waiting for Kana’s check-in. Both of them were breathing hard. Cassian took a moment to wipe blood from Molo’s sweaty face, and see that it wasn’t his blood.

“You lived,” Molo said. “They said you would, but. You know.”

“Nice disappearing act,” Cassian said. Molo made a face.

“They didn’t see any point to me hanging around,” he said. “Time for a new mission. Did you get my note?”

“I did,” Cassian said. “I looked them up but I don’t figure I need out, so I didn’t take that offer.”

“I didn’t figure you did either,” Molo said, softer, “but I figured I’d give you the option. You’re a kid, Cassian, you didn’t choose this.”

“I _did_ choose this,” Cassian said fiercely. “And I’m not a child anymore.”

Molo made a face, and looked down. There was silence for a moment, just their winded breathing.

“You kid’s cute,” Cassian said. “Saw a holo of him with Organa’s daughter.”

Molo glanced up, face lighting up a little. “Isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Cassian said, and he couldn’t really be mad about it. “His mom’s pretty too.”

Molo laughed. “I wouldn’t call Lita _pretty_ ,” he said. “Not to her face.”

“Is she mean?” Cassian asked, really wondering.

“No,” Molo said. “She’s, ah. She’s really. Determined, about things.” He shrugged, shifted his weight. “She and I-- we never married, or anything. It wasn’t like that. She’s-- she’s with Norasol, really, they’re-- together. I was just there because she wanted a baby. That was my job.”

“Really,” Cassian said, frowning. “But they have-- I mean, there’s technology for that.”

“The genetic material has to come from somewhere,” Molo said. “And it’s not like-- I mean, it wasn’t like I wasn’t involved. It’s just. Complicated.”

“And they sent you off to join the Rebellion so you wouldn’t be in the way,” Cassian filled in.

“No,” Molo said, and laughed. “No, I-- we were all freedom fighters, in the fall of our planet. But Lita got hurt. She can’t do this shit. And among the three of us, I figured, I could do the most. I wanted Norasol to stay with the kid, she’s-- she’s smart, Cassian, she knows the old ways--”

“She was the one you were in love with,” Cassian guessed. He’d gotten better at figuring out what people meant by the things they didn’t say.

“Well,” Molo said. There was a moment. “Yeah,” he said, finally. “She’s-- I’ve known her since we were little kids.”

“You’re in the Rebellion because there wasn’t room for you,” Cassian said. Was he bitter? Why was he bitter? He hadn’t really had a choice besides the Rebellion. Not with everyone else dead. Not with needing his revenge. Not with there being no other meaning in the galaxy.

Molo snorted. “Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older, kid,” he said, “but that’s not why I’m in the Rebellion. There was room for me there, believe me. But Lita’s doing diplomatic work, and I’m no good at that shit.”

“You can say that again,” Cassian said, because it was true. He checked his comm, to make sure it was working. “We should’ve heard from her by now,” he added, frowning.

Molo shook his head. “You don’t rush Kana,” he said.

“You’ve been with her a long time, huh?” Cassian said.

Molo frowned. “Couple years, I guess,” he said.

“She told me she thought you wanted to, how did she put it. Bone me,” Cassian said. He should’ve let it lie, but-- he had a bit more worldly experience now, had been taught properly how to kiss, among other things, and he’d thought he was over this but here he was in a closet with Molo and he wanted very, very badly to do the things he now knew he’d been wanting to do all along.

Molo, heartbreakingly enough, snorted. “She always has had a way with words,” he said.

“I threw a headset at her,” Cassian said. “Told her that was a disgusting expression.”

“It’s not my favorite way of putting it, no,” Molo said. He checked his comm too, Cassian saw him do it; he was getting twitchy too.

“It’s been too long,” Cassian said.

“No,” Molo said, “if we move too soon we’ll expose her.”

“You don’t, do you,” Cassian said. Molo blinked at him, pulling his head back to look at him more directly in the close quarters. “Want to.” He had to laugh. “Bone me.”

Molo bit his lips, trying not to laugh too. “I don’t generally bone people,” he said. “I mean. As a concept maybe... “ He squinted, grimacing. “Not,” he finished. “I wouldn’t use that phrase. For anything.”

Cassian couldn’t keep from laughing. It was-- there was all this tension between them, and he didn’t know what it was, and he was close enough to feel Molo’s body heat, and _stars_ , but he _wanted_ him. “I’m only using the phrase because she did,” he said.

“It’s generally not a good idea to do anything because Kana did, though,” Molo said, but he was looking at Cassian’s face in a way Cassian really wasn’t used to.

“I seduced a man into getting naked,” Cassian said, “and then I tortured him with a knife until he gave up the names of his co-conspirators.”

“What, just now?” Molo asked.

“Yes,” Cassian said.

“Do you feel bad about that?” Molo asked.

Cassian shook his head no. “He’d already given me your name,” he said. “I figured then that he had to die.”

“Did you do it for me?” Molo asked.

Cassian shook his head again. “I did it for the Rebellion,” he said.

Molo raised his hand and caught the side of Cassian’s face gently in his fingers, rubbing his thumb along Cassian’s cheekbone. “Maybe I don’t want to bone you,” he said, “but I do want-- something along those lines.”

“I figured you’d dismissed me as a little brother,” Cassian said, heart tripping in his chest.

“No,” Molo said. “I had a brother. You’re not-- like him.”

Cassian stared up at him. His breath was coming hard now for a different reason. Molo’s hand was big and rough, callused and hot against the sweat-clammy skin of Cassian’s jaw. “I’d do a lot for you,” Cassian said, “but I’d do a lot more for the Rebellion.”

“Yeah,” Molo said, and tipped his head down and took Cassian’s mouth. It was tentative, and light, and Cassian swayed in his grasp and opened his mouth. This was nothing like when Molo had been teaching him. This wasn’t like that at all. Molo licked at his lip and then kissed him, a little firmer. “Yeah, me too, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid,” Cassian said.

Molo laughed. “Okay,” he said, and kissed him once more. Then he straightened up, and let go of Cassian’s face. “Okay, now it has been too long.”

He stepped back slightly-- there’d been more room in here all along, he’d just been crowding Cassian the whole time-- and checked his comm, and keyed something into it. STATUS, he sent, to buzz Kana.

“You’re kind of an asshole,” Cassian said.

Molo flashed him a grin. “Are you surprised?”

“No,” Cassian said. He almost had his breathing under control again.

Molo’s comm buzzed. He made a grim face, and sent something back, and then his comm crackled. “I got a problem,” Kana said. “I can’t get to the ship.”

“I have a ship,” Cassian said. “We’ll make for it, and come get you instead.”

“Maybe,” she said dubiously.

It was better than no plan.

“Hope you got your breath back,” Molo said to Cassian.

“My breath is fine,” Cassian said, “no thanks to you.”

“Ha,” Molo said, and shoved the panel off the safe room, and they took off running, zig-zagging through the city, way out to the outskirts of the harbor.

 

It went more badly wrong than any op Cassian had ever been in. They were massively outmaneuvered and outnumbered, and no matter what they did, they couldn’t get enough breathing room to sneak Kana past the guard patrol. Molo nearly got himself captured, and only got away by throwing himself between the cars of a speeding grav-train, hitting the ground on the other side, rolling, and scrambling up to sprint down an alley. Cassian saw the whole thing from his sniper’s perch, but managed to hold his fire and not give away his position.

It still didn’t distract enough of the patrol to let Kana sneak past them. She was cornered in a warehouse complex, and the exits were all covered. They could have finished her off with a grenade, but they clearly wanted to take her alive.

Cassian had assembled a blueprint of the complex in his head by the time Molo rejoined him, gasping and limping. “Anything?” he asked.

Cassian shook his head. “I counted the openings and figured out how the hallways go from the roof vents,” he said, “and everything they’re not guarding is covered with locked mesh grids.”

“Could we break the lock off one of the grids?” Molo asked.

“I doubt it,” Cassian said, “there’s basically no opening they can’t see from where they’re guarding. But even still, if it were some material we could break with just a file-- this is a terrible neighborhood, they’d get broken into all the time.”

“It’s our only shot,” Molo said, and comm’d Kana to give her the plan.

“It’s a terrible plan,” Cassian said, but gathered himself and came along, because it wasn’t like he had a better one. They’d called for help and no one was available or within range. It was down to them to salvage what they could.

They had to climb down from another building to get to the one window with no guards at it. Molo nearly fell; he was injured, and exhausted, and Cassian wasn’t much better-off himself. It took Kana half an hour to make her way there.

Half an hour during which they realized that, as Cassian had feared, nothing they had would silently, or even quietly, make an opening in the grid. “We’ll have to use a blaster,” Molo said.

“I don’t even think a blaster will do it,” Cassian said. “This stuff doesn’t melt.”

Kana collapsed on the far side of the grid, panting. “I can’t keep running,” she said, voice shaking. She was injured, blood leaking across the floor.

“Did you leave a blood trail?” Molo asked tersely.

“I might have,” she said. She was shaking all over. She dragged herself over to the grid. “Fuck. You can’t-- this won’t cut. You can’t cut it.” She gave a low, despairing moan. “I’m trapped!”

“We’re going to get you out,” Molo said.

“No, you’re not,” she said, and pushed herself up. “Here’s the info.” She had a small chip, and had to force it cross-wise through the mesh grid covering the entrance.

“No,” Molo said, “you keep it,” but Cassian reached over and carefully pulled it through the grid.

“I’ll put it somewhere safe,” he said, tucking it into a little pocket in his shirt.

“You can’t get me out,” Kana said. “You can’t-- not this way. I can’t-- I can’t run any farther.”

Molo gritted his teeth. “We’ll carry you out,” he said. He unholstered his blaster and pointed it at the lock.

“No,” Kana said. “No! Molo, don’t do that.”

“It’s the only way,” he said.

“It won’t work,” she said, “and then they’ll know you’re here.”

“It will work,” Molo said.

“Listen,” Kana said, pushing her fingers through the mesh to put them over the lock and spoil Molo’s shot. “Listen to me, Untar.”

“Kana, move,” Molo said. He was shaking, though whether with exhaustion or frustration or both, Cassian wasn’t sure. He himself was close to the end of what he could take, and Molo had been running harder for longer.

“If you don’t listen to me,” she said, “and you do this, and they catch you, and they catch the boy too, then this mission fails and they’ll get what they want out of you or me or him, they’re trying to catch us alive so they can torture information out of us, you know this.”

There was a long pause, and finally Molo lowered the blaster. “I know,” he said.

“So send the boy away now,” she said. “Send him up. If I can be gotten out, you can do it. Get him and the chip out of here.”

Molo chewed his lip, and looked over at Cassian. “All right,” he said. “Climb, and I’ll meet you at your ship.” He had the coordinates, he knew where it was; Cassian squashed down the need to double-check.

He began climbing obediently, but he could still hear. “Next,” Kana said, “I’ll let you take one shot with that blaster at that lock, but if that doesn’t do it, you need to act fast, all right, Molo? The next shot has to be for me. You can’t let them take me alive.”

“Don’t ask me to do that,” Molo said, sounding pained, and Cassian paused, looking back. He’d known this was coming, though. Molo was too injured and exhausted to carry Kana. As soon as she’d sent him away, Cassian had known this was what she was angling for.

“You know there’s no choice,” Kana said fiercely, voice shaking. “You need to take that shot right away, Molo. If that lock doesn’t break, you need to kill me right away.”

“I can’t,” Molo said.

“Of course you can,” Kana said, and she sounded angry. “You know I don’t have a weapon! I can’t do it myself! You can’t let them have me!”

Molo glanced up, and Cassian hastily began climbing again, so he didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. His heart was racing, but he had the forethought to rig Molo’s climbing rope so he could help pull him up in a hurry. Molo was too injured to make the climb himself, and far too weak to do it with Kana too.

After a moment, he heard a blaster shot.

Then a second blaster shot.

Then a third.

And then he saw Molo’s rope move, so he leaned his head over-- Molo was alone-- and said, “I’ll pull you up!”

Molo let go of the wall, and Cassian hauled him up and grabbed his hand, and they ran.

 

They made it to the ship, and Cassian had to drag Molo the last ten meters or so. He dropped him on the floor and made his way on shaky legs to the cockpit, got them airborne, slammed them into hyperdrive, and only then fished the chip out of the pocket he had sewn to a lining in his shirt, near the fasteners so most people wouldn’t notice it.

Molo made an appearance, then, ashen-faced and shaking, and dropped heavily into the co-pilot’s seat.

“I’m sorry,” Cassian said.

Molo shook his head slightly.

 

They bypassed an Imperial patrol the remote sensors picked up in time by ducking into the shadow of an asteroid and affixing the docking clamps. They’d have to stay there until the patrol was out of sensor range. It would be hours.

Cassian got stiffly out of his chair, and walked around the tiny ship to try and loosen his locked-up muscles. Exertion and then stillness were not optimal living conditions; he’d be sore for days.

Molo didn’t move, and Cassian finally went over and touched his shoulder. “Molo,” he said. “You gotta get up and move, you’ll be all locked up.”

Molo shook him off. Cassian thought about leaving him alone, but he was in so much pain, and he knew Molo had to be worse. He had bruises and probably a sprain or two, on top of the exertion. “It won’t bring her back, hurting yourself. You have to keep going.”

“Don’t tell me what I have to do,” Molo said savagely, rounding on him. Cassian backed up a little, putting his hands up, but this was about the best he could have hoped for, so he grabbed Molo by the shirt instead.

“Come on,” Cassian said. “Stand up.”

“Fuck you,” Molo said, but he stood up, and fell over, and Cassian caught him, backing up so there’d be room for Molo’s long legs to extend the rest of the way. He couldn’t stand, and collapsed, and dragged Cassian down with him.

Cassian wrapped his arms around Molo and cradled his head against his shoulder. “Did you do as she asked?” he said softly.

“Yes,” Molo said, and then sobbed, and Cassian put his hand on the back of Molo’s head.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right. You did the right thing.”

Molo shook his head, but didn’t say anything else, keeping his face tucked against Cassian’s shoulder, breathing raggedly. After a little while, Cassian got up and pulled Molo up with him, and Molo managed to stand. He’d gone cold and grim and distant, and stretched to loosen his frozen-up muscles with a cold determination.

“At least we got,” Cassian said, gesturing at the chip on the control panel, and Molo spun around and hissed, “Shut up.”

“Okay,” Cassian said.

“I shot her twice in the face so they wouldn’t be able to identify her,” Molo said. “And so she wouldn’t accidentally survive it.”

“Oh,” Cassian said.

“If you had to do the same for me would you do it?” Molo asked.

Cassian couldn’t imagine it, but he knew he’d have to. He swallowed, and gathered himself, and finally managed to say, “Yes.”

“I don’t believe you,” Molo said.

“I would find a way,” Cassian said carefully, “to be able to do it.”

Molo grabbed him by the front of the shirt and yanked him in, and Cassian figured he was going to get hit or something, but Molo kissed him instead, hard enough that his head rocked back.

“Fuck,” Cassian said finally, when Molo let him come up to breathe, “yes.”

“This is a terrible fucking idea,” Molo said. They’d staggered to the side of the ship and Cassian was flattened against the wall now, in the narrow strip behind the navigator’s seat.

“Like I’m going to have any better ideas,” Cassian said, and laced his fingers around the back of Molo’s neck to pull him in again and kiss him viciously, lips and teeth, his other hand tugging at Molo’s belt, pulling the other man’s big solid body against his.

“Fuck,” Molo groaned, letting his head fall against the paneling of the ship’s interior. Cassian wriggled, and wrapped his legs around Molo’s waist; there wasn’t much gravity in here, though the asteroid was big enough to generate some, in conjunction with the little shuttle’s grav generators. It was enough that Molo was pressing against him with real weight.

“Yes, please,” Cassian said, “ _please_.”

“It won’t fix anything,” Molo said.

“Get me through these next two hours of waiting for that damn patrol to go away without thinking about what just happened,” Cassian said. “Let me pretend I’m a normal twenty-year-old, you know? And the hot guy I used to fantasize about when I was sixteen, who was nice to me and also badass, who has been there for me a way not a lot of people have-- let me pretend that it’s totally awesome that he’s finally touching me, and that he didn’t just ask me to blow his head off in the event it becomes necessary, which it probably will. You know?”

Molo, improbably enough, laughed, his face tucked next to Cassian’s neck, forehead against the wall. His body was so heavy, so substantial, and Cassian wasn’t totally sure but he was pretty sure Molo was hard. He himself sure was, almost painfully so, and had been since that first kiss had started.

“Promise you’ll blow my head off when I need you to,” Molo said, and kissed the side of Cassian’s neck, “and I’ll keep going on this absolutely terrible idea.”

“I’ll promise you anything right now,” Cassian said, “if only you stop talking.”

“Deal,” Molo said, and kissed him again.

**Author's Note:**

> You didn't think this would be a happy story, did you?  
> Originally I was going to extend it through Molo's eventual fate, but I don't think I have to. You can infer what must have eventually happened.


End file.
